A little night music

My roommate Andy is a monster bluegrass guitar player, he's pretty incredible.

We had a pretty late night, tons of people visited the room and we just passed around a bottle of Jamison and a guitar.

The view from my balcony

This is what I see when i leave my cabin.

There is really nothing like it in the world. I keep trying to explain to people the beauty of Alaska, I have to be careful though, lest people think of me as some sort of hippie dippy douchebag or something.

Really though, it is the most beautiful place i've ever seen. On the drive down we saw Mount McKinley from about 150 miles away. You can only see it from that distance about 30% of the time, we were lucky. I can't lie, I had trouble catching my breath, even from that distance there was something really magical about it. (Wow, i just called something in nature magical....i'll catch hell for this)

General Store

Because Denali's business is so seasonal, nothing is really open yet. Today my roommate drove a couple of us down to Healy Alaska which is about 10 miles away from the park. We were finally able to buy some of the stuff we left at home...Detergent, soap, Jim Beam...and so forth.


This was on the window at the store in Healy.

My hotel rules

First thing i see when checking in...

Alaska has made me 70% more manly....i've only been here for an hour.

The night before

If you are doing a blog about going somewhere, it is important to have a picture of an empty room and packed bags......PATHOS!!!

Thanks Travel Channel

Television
Originally uploaded by Tyler Lansdown

This week was National Parks week on the Travel Channel. I was able to watch 3 hours about stuff i'll never do in Alaska.

A first.

Believe it or not, in all of my 30 years i've never purchased my own shoes. I've always received shoes as gifts, or i've just kept costume shoes from various plays. Today, i broke new ground. I bought shoes....LL Bean boots, perfect for bear kicking.

Alaska is full of deadly bears

I leave for Alaska in less than one month, to perform at a Dinner theatre.

I have done a bit of research...

I'm scared..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_bear_attacks_in_North_America_by_decade

These are fatal bear attacks listed by decade. Notice that there are very few listed back in the early 1900's, yet tons listed in the last 30 years. Hopefully this is because it was tough to document such attacks 100 years ago...if this isn't the case, humans have become far worse at avoiding brutal bear attacks.

Oh, this is my first blog, i hope to update it as much as possible during my Alaskan adventure.

Hopefully the last picture you see isn't the gaping maw of a black bear.